I thought I would take a minute out of my busy hectic day to give a shout out to all my fellow under-appreciated systems administrators out there in their dark offices on this the 16th Annual System Administrator Appreciation Day.

Consider all the work your sys.admin does behind the scene, keeping your network connection running, your email not being overly flooded with spam, your IM’s running at a decent speed, and being there to fix a server outage at 3am just so some people can go look at the funny picture you uploaded. Consider how often this creature gets thanked on his day to day fight against spammers, hackers, lUsers, Software Updates, etc Consider this, then be happy that this IT Hero gets one day a year when (s)he gets appreciated.

So everyone, go take a coffee, cake, or gift to your sysadmin now. or at least drop by their hidy hole to say thanks.

For those about the Insane Asylum Myself & Demopengu are fond of Cake, Beer, & Chocolate (Oh and anything with glowing blue LED’s) !!!

CN

P.S.

Consider this as well. Your Friendly SysAdmin has access to your email, they know what you have been doing and to who. They see all the packets of data traveling back and forth from your machine, seeing when you are working and when your just browsing ebay/facebook/etc, They know what websites you’ve visited (and can change your history to show you been looking at p0rn in the office), Stuff you may not want made public. They control your password, your login name, your email address, how much of the networks bandwidth you can use, what IM clients are banned, and a million other things that help you through the working day. Consider this well, and remember, “Its only one day a year!“

Basically there has been an application for a lap dancing club to be allowed to operate in Wrexham, and some councillors and church groups are worried that is will lower the tone of the town.

Lets consider that for a second since it takes a bit of getting used to. “Lowering the tone of Wrexham“?

This is Wrexham. Soon to be Home of the UK’s first Super-Prison that no where else wanted because it would lower the value of wherever it is placed, would be a security risk, would have criminals let out on day passes (Yes, they have said that will happen). So Wrexham will be known as a Prison.

But there is more, Wrexham often appears on TV in the many identical shows where they send cameras out to capture the worst pubs, violent nightlife, or boozy bad places.

And now people are worried a lap dancing club will LOWER the tone of the town?

Four score and seven years ago, or in 1776 We decided that the young country of America had become old enough to trust not to run out in front of traffic, or try and play with dangerous animals and as such we took the reins off.

There comes a time in every parents life when you have to trust that your early guidance and teachings have given your offspring all the help they need to make their way in the world alone.

So the UK took off the training reins and watched as America took its first hesitant steps on it’s own. Yes there was a few stumbles and mishaps along the way. Several times America slipped and cut its hand or knee and UK wanted to pick it up and hold it safe.

“Maybe we should leave the reins on for a bit longer.”

UK.

But like all good parents we stayed back, Watching carefully and holding back our urges to guide and jump in at every hurdle. You have to trust your children will do the right thing.

I will say, America you grew up ok. Ok. you have made some really poor dating choices, and Looking at your teenage photographs “What were you wearing??” But all in all, you did well.

SO we here in the UK in general, and the Three Ninjas Temple in particular would like to wish you a Happy Anniversary of your First Steps without the Reins!!

Happy 10th Birthday to the “Three Ninjas” community.

The Cake is not always a lie!

Sit tight dear reader while I give you the brief history of how we came about, and why were are celebrating today!

19th May 2005:

A couple of us in the office created LiveJournal accounts so we could keep up with what our friends were doing, and so we could post random gibbering’s online during the slower parts of the day to try and keep us sane. My account was under the name penddraig, and the first ever post I made can be found here entitled “First Entry”

Our posts covered mostly the insanity of work, random thoughts & meme’s, and what we had been up too. Including a few funny themed posts like the “ICE phone scam“. Our little community grew with some constant interactions and comments from the same group of people.

8th January 2009:

With the sell off of LiveJournal to a Russian businessman, and the reported rumours it was closing down reported here in “Livejournal” (Plus the niggling voice telling me as an IT person I should have my own hosted blog) I decided to start my own self-hosted Blog using WordPress as the core system. I therefore set up wordpress, imported all my old LiveJournal posts into the new Blog and was up running.

12th January 2009:

Before I’d even finished setting up my blog, a friend from the old LiveJournal days expressed an interest in moving away as well. After a beer fuelled discussion, we decided to have a group or community blog. So After much discussion we settled on a domain name, and the Three Ninjas blog became a reality.

So without that original set of LJ posts, this blog would never have been here. So please take a minute to wish us (and GothNinja in particular) a Happy Blog Birthday.

It is once again time for the UK population to go out on mass and fail to vote me in as supreme ruler of the country. Otherwise known as “The General Election”.

I like to do my civic duty, so this morning I packed emergency food, water, medical supplies and enough weaponry to hold off a small invading force (or large force if they’re French) and headed out on an Adventure!

You are probably thinking “WTF? He’s just going to vote, why would he…. just Why??” So let me explain my voting experience.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin….

I live on the outskirts of one of the largest Community/Villages in Wales, and If I leave my house, and turn left, its a 1 minute drive through civilisation to the nearest polling station. Only I am not allowed to vote there, Oh no, I must use a different one. I have to turn right and head away from civilisation, until I come to a T-Junction where I can turn right and head to the nearest Town, go back the way I came to civilisation, or turn left and head for the hills.

You guessed it. I turned left and headed upwards along a two lane road, that twisted and turned along between farmers fields, meandering upwards until it turned into a road just wider than a single lane. After a while this one and a half lane road, went down to a single lane road as I left the farmland behind and move deeper into the wilderness of the mountains.

Eventually I came to a patch of road where the bank on one side has been worn away and you can force your car into that space leaving enough room for traffic to get past you, as long as that traffic is a small car willing to rub along the hedge. Next to this “Parking Spot” is an old abandoned church hall with a banner outside proclaiming “Polling Station”.

I forced my car into the space and approached the building, trying to avoid the kid sitting outside playing the Banjo. and entered the hall.

You enter into a small entrance hall the size of a cloakroom, and normally there’s a door into the hall. Today the doors were missing and had been replaced with swinging bits of plywood, I tried not to look for any blood stains, and kept my mind off thoughts of hordes of zombies (or Locals) breaking through the original doors after survivors as I swung the plyboard open and entered the hall.

The hall was empty apart from a rickety table with cardboard privacy screens, and a small table facing the door manned by two people who looked to have the combined age of 764. I walked slowly up to the two people, my right hand absently hovering mere inches away from the concealed blade I’d draw at the first sudden movement, or if the Banjo music stopped. I handed over my Voting slip and waited while they tried to find me on the large list of voters. I say large list since the names covered two sides of an A4 sheet. After ten minutes one of them found me, and handing over the voting form, while the other made a note in his book.

I collected my form which was basically a folded piece of paper with some squares on it, and took it over to the table where a pencil was taped to a piece of string to prevent theft. I placed my X in the appropriate box, and returned to the “locals”? to drop my vote through a letterbox into a glorified bucket. Yes, in this age of computers, touch-screen terminals, and easy technology we in the UK use pencils, a tamper proof voting system that is super secure unless the person wanting to rig the ballot has the cutting edge tools of an eraser and another pencil. Am I the only one who thinks this is a slow, silly, insecure voting system? Also Humans counting thousands of votes? Its way to easy for mistakes to happen. We’re living in the future people, lets try and act like we are.

I quickly left the hall, backing away from the people behind the table since I was unwilling to turn my back on them. They had not spoken at all during my time in the hall apart from when one read out my name from the list. I exited, quickly checking my car had no extra passengers hiding in it before jumping in and locking the doors. I then shot off down the other side of the mountain to head back to civilisation, and did not relax, or put away the weapons until I hit an area with street lighting.

And that dear Constant Reader, is how I have to vote. If I did not have a large collection of deadly weapons, and no fear of using them I would probably never vote.